City man charged with attempted murder in Balto. Co.

Bradford Steven Holup, 49, of Baltimore was arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault and burglary in connection with the robbery of a Towson home.

Bradford Steven Holup, 49, of Baltimore was arrested and charged with attempted murder, assault and burglary in connection with the robbery of a Towson home. (Photo provided by Baltimore County Police)

Mary Gail Hare, The Baltimore Sun

Baltimore County police have charged a 49-year-old city man with attempted murder, assault and burglary in connection with the robbery of a Towson home early Sunday morning.

Bradford Steven Holup of the 4000 block of Corse Ave. in Hamilton was being held without bail at the Baltimore County Detention Center. He was arrested about 4 a.m. Sunday, after police found him in a car at Bosley and Chesapeake avenues in Towson.

A 65-year-old man had returned to his home about 1:30 a.m. Sunday in the 500 block of Allegheny Ave. whem he discovered a burglary in progress, police said. The suspect forced him to walk down the stairs to the basement, police said, and the victim was shot in the stairwell. He was able to call 911 after the suspect ran from the home. The suspect had attempted to steal the victim's car but was deterred by an anti-theft device.

The victim, who was suffering from a gunshot wound to the neck, was taken to an area hospital, where he is expected to make a full recovery, police said.

Investigators are working to determine what was stolen during the robbery. Police found some of the property taken from the home when Holup was taken into custody. They have not found any relationship between the victim and the suspect, nor is there any indication that the victim was targeted.

A day after the incident, neighbors were still expressing shock.

"This is very unusual," Jack Baggett, a West Towson resident, said Monday from his porch across the street from the park on Highland Avenue.

"Burglary is one thing," he said, "but shooting someone, that's a whole different matter."

Baggett has lived in the neighborhood for more than 25 years, said it consists mostly of families with children, who move out once the kids are out of school.

Baggett's neighbor, Jackie Dressel, said she considers the community one of the safest in Baltimore County.

Dressel said she heard helicopters overhead Sunday morning and learned later from a member of the neighborhood association that there had been a serious incident.

But the burglary and shooting hasn't changed her opinion of the neighborhood, she said. Though she said she has always been careful to make sure the doors are locked in her home — especially since she had her son, Jackson, who is now 5 weeks old — she has no reservations about living in the neighborhood.

Likewise, Caren Fisher, who lived nearby for eight years before moving to Timonium and was visiting Monday with her son at the playground on Highland Avenue, said it was a "very safe neighborhood."

She noted, though, that its proximity to downtown Towson makes the neighborhood vulnerable to outsiders.

"We're very close to town, and people can easily access our neighborhood," she said.